Transportation infrastructures provide many benefits to societies in addition to potentially increasing the efficiency and cost effectiveness of moving large numbers of people, goods, and/or other objects from one location to another. A significant challenge in relation to maintaining and successfully managing transportation infrastructures is how to simultaneously accommodate the sometimes conflicting requirements, goals, interests, or preferences of, for example, rush-hour commuters and law enforcement agencies.
Another key consideration in transportation infrastructure management is safety, for example, attempts are often made to strike an appropriate balance between a desire to effectively enforce traffic laws and a need in some circumstances to allow the vast majority of vehicles to continue moving through infrastructure networks (e.g., roads, highways, checkpoints) without being stopped or with minimal delays.
Inefficiencies in the process of enforcing traffic laws sometimes result in the additional problem of failing to timely notify a driver who is breaking a law that he or she is, in fact, breaking the law and potentially endangering their own life or the lives of others. For example, some cities utilize a highly inefficient system in which cameras are positioned to take a picture of a vehicle's license plate (e.g., as the vehicle traverses an intersection) and, thereafter, mail the owner of the vehicle a picture of their vehicle in a red light violation.
Users and operators of transportation infrastructures, parking facilities, storage facilities, impound facilities, and vehicle transport services could also benefit if certain aspects of transactions involving vehicles and the afore-mentioned infrastructures, facilities, and services were less cumbersome and/or expensive.
Accordingly, it would be useful to be able to provide an apparatus or method for monitoring, managing, and facilitating transactions involving vehicles that addresses one or more of the foregoing considerations, or that provides a benefit such as improved efficiency, costs savings, or better or more informed decision making processes, for example, in relation to use, operation, or management of the afore-mentioned infrastructures, facilities, and services.